Political Economy - Authors

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk

(1851-1914)

Written in 1896 for a series of independent Essays on Political Science, Böhm-Bawerk's work has held up as a classic criticism of Marxist economic theory. In Capital Vol I., Marx explained the profits of capital as resulting from surplus value. He left open the problem of explaining how capitalists with differing ratios of labor to machinery can have similar profits, a contradiction to be resolved in further works. Marx, in Capital Vol III, takes up the matter again, but according to Böhm-Bawerk's essay, does not resolve the issue logically. He concludes with a critique of his contemporary, Werner Sombart's interpretation of Marx in Sombart's essay, "Zur Kritik des ökonomischen Systems von Karl Marx". Send comments or corrections to Sally Ryan.